


Summer Break Diet

by amorremanet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Chubby Castiel, Clothing Kink, Community: chubwinchesters, Dom/sub Undertones, Feeding, Food Kink, Food Porn, Humiliation, M/M, Situational Humiliation, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Verbal Humiliation, Weight Gain, chubby!kink, feederism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a happy accident involving skim milk leads to Cas finding out that he likes gaining weight on purpose, and leads to Dean finding out that he really loves to watch Cas eat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When he tells Dean about the situation at home, Cas almost can't believe that he's stuck in something like this at all. It's been two days since Mother banned him from drinking skim milk, and it all still seems so painfully surreal. Like this can't be happening to anyone, much less to Cas—and on the positive side of things, Dean seems to agree with Cas on the matter. Not that it really helps to fix things or make Mother's actions make any more sense, but it does soothe Cas somewhat. As much as anything can really soothe him, at the moment, which isn't all that much.

"She banned you from drinking skim milk because Anna put on your jeans by mistake and couldn't fucking zip them?" Dean's eyes nearly bulge out of his skull when Cas shrugs at him, and he goes on, "What's she even going so crazy about here? Last I checked, she's still pretty skinny. Maybe not as skinny as _you_ , but…" Dean huffs and waves his hand in Cas's general direction, in a way that Cas supposes is meant to indicate that very few people in Lawrence are as skinny as Cas is. Which, in all fairness, is probably true.

Cas heaves a deep breath and sighs, burrowing further back into the Winchesters' sofa and folding his arms over his practically nonexistent stomach. "The only thing I want to know is," he says, "why is it my responsibility to suffer when Anna is the one who only drinks chocolate milk? Why do I need to give up my favorite kind of milk in order to somehow compensate for her gaining a few pounds?"

"Fuck if I know, man." Dean reaches over and ruffles Cas's hair. "Too bad you probably couldn't gain weight if you tried—if you could, I'd have the perfect solution for you. But anyway, you know you're always welcome here if you get sick of your mom trying to control everything you eat."

Cas shakes his head and sighs again. "Mother probably wouldn't notice if I ate ice cream for every meal, Dean. Father might notice if I really started getting chubby, but that's dependent on him actually being in the house. There aren't any control issues here—not really, anyway—and more importantly? I fail to see how making me get fat would actually do anything to fix the problem of Anna's outrageous reaction to putting on my jeans. At any rate, I'm sure this will all blow over soon enough."

"And if it doesn't? What if you're stuck dealing with this crap for the whole summer?" When Cas looks over at Dean, he gets the most painfully earnest expression that he's ever seen his best friend wearing—Dean's eyes are wide and he's pouting far too much. It would look insincere on anyone but Dean. "I mean, come on, Cas—summer break is coming up fast, and you can't honestly tell me that you're looking forward to seeing where all this could lead."

"I don't suppose that I am." Cas huffs and rolls his eyes, mostly in an affectionate manner. "But I also don't think there's too much cause for alarm. There certainly isn't cause for indulging Anna's ridiculous behavior by trying to make me fat instead. Not that I think I'd mind it any, but I simply don't see the connection between making me fat and making her stop."

"You wouldn't have to get _that_ fat, if you didn't want to." Dean shrugs as though they have this kind of conversation every day, as though it's perfectly normal for them to talk about gaining weight in any kind of positive tones. Never in Cas's life has he heard someone talk about weight gain as anything but a negative—and yet, here's Dean, giving him an almost hopeful-looking smile and saying, "You'd just have to put on a few pounds—enough to make Anna definitely the skinny twin. Maybe then she'd back off, you could switch back to skim milk, and then you'd probably lose the weight like nothing."

"That's assuming I would still want to. You never know: putting on a little bit of weight could unleash some secret gluttonous tendencies in me." Cas chuckles and shakes his head—but once he gets over his own joke, he notices that Dean isn't laughing.

On the contrary, Dean's gone all wide-eyed again, and his mouth hangs open ever-so-slightly, and it takes two snaps of Cas's fingers to shake him around again. Never mind that: when Cas says that he was just joking, Dean mutters _oh, right, yeah, of course_ and slumps into the sofa as though he was actually enjoying the idea of seeing Cas get chubby. Which is a ridiculous thought, entirely. For one thing, Dean and Cas are just friends—best friends, maybe, but nothing more and nothing less. For another, slightly more important thing, though… why would Dean _enjoy_ watching Cas gain weight? There wouldn't be anything in it for him. It makes no sense.

And even so, Dean perks right up when Cas sighs and supposes that he could probably stand to gain a few pounds, anyway. His eyebrows nearly jump off his forehead when Cas says, "It would probably stop Mother and Anna and Grandmother Milton from worrying that I'm too skinny, at the very least. And considering that I can't make anything more complicated than coffee and microwave ramen, I… would appreciate it if you helped, Dean?"

******

According to Dean, the first thing they need to do, before anything else, is get a sense of what all they're working with, here. And something more than just, "Cas doesn't have that much fat on him to speak of" and, "Cas wears some super-skinny skinny jeans." According to Dean, if they're going to do this properly, they need to keep careful track of Cas's weight and measurements—and when he suggests this, Cas can't help but narrow his eyes and wrinkle his nose a little bit. He can't help but tilt his head slightly to the left and wonder how much of this is really necessary.

He's not opposed to any of Dean's suggestions, as such. He just thinks it's odd, the way Dean yanks him to the upstairs bathroom as though it's Christmas morning and Santa Claus hid the presents there.

In order to make the readings as accurate as possible, Cas has to undress and he does so without regard for whether or not Dean's watching. Really, it hardly matters if Dean's watching him or not. Dean's not interested in Cas, so he isn't going to get anything out of watching Cas strip out of his jeans and his cardigan, down to his baggy t-shirt and his low-slung boxers—besides, when Cas takes off his t-shirt, Dean's interest in getting Cas topless is entirely scientific. If any of this can really be called scientific. Dean's only interest lies in wrapping the measuring tape around Cas's slender waist (which barely measures twenty-eight inches) and his skinny hips (which barely check in at thirty).

"No wonder Anna's jealous of you, Pretty Boy," Dean says with a huff, smirking up at Cas like the Devil himself. "If I was your twin, I'd be pretty jealous of how skinny you are, too—seriously, you'd probably make anyone in our class look fat."

"Yes, well, hopefully that won't be the case for too much longer." Cas doesn't even try not to roll his eyes. It's really not a big deal, is it? He's always been this thin—surely, everyone in their class must be accustomed to Cas being so thin by now. And in the back of his mind, Cas can't help wondering what their reactions to him gaining weight might be—how might Meg, his ex-girlfriend, react to Cas getting chubby? How might Ruby, Meg's sister and Anna's girlfriend, look at him differently? He zones out for a moment, just trying to picture how he'd even look with any extra weight, much less with a tummy, with padding on his hips, with thighs that touch each other when he walks…

So, it's Dean's turn to snap his fingers in front of Cas's face in order to bring him back to reality, and when he does, Cas blushes bright pink. He doesn't tell Dean what he was thinking about—it would probably be awkward, and besides, Dean would probably think it's weird.

For all this shouldn't be any kind of awkward for him, Cas still sighs when the time comes for the moment of truth, when the time comes for him to face the scale. He brushes his palms down the skin of his torso, smoothes out nonexistent wrinkles in his shorts, and can't entirely make himself get up on the scale. He takes a series of deep breaths. He sighs and closes his eyes. He kicks the thing and it doesn't make him feel any better—Cas only manages to climb up on the platform when Dean threatens to come over there and push him onto it. Trembling slightly, he looks down at the screen and reads off the number…

"One-fifty, Dean," Cas says with a huff, trying to ignore the way his heart sinks in his chest as he looks over to Dean's perch on the edge of the tub. "I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds."

Scribbling the number down in his notebook next to Cas's measurements, Dean sighs as well, and it almost sounds like he wanted the number to be higher. Cas doesn't suppose he blames Dean for that—at his annual physical last summer, Cas weighed in at one-fifty-six, and to find that he's lost weight he didn't need to lose is… well, it's disheartening, more than just a little bit so—but on the other hand, Dean doesn't know about that fact. And Dean surely can't be getting anything out of this, because that wouldn't make any sense—but fortunately, before Cas can ponder this too much, Dean pipes up:

"So how much weight do you think you want to put on?" He twirls his pen around in his fingers and seems to smirk a bit too much as he says, "I mean… ten, fifteen pounds? Probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, really. That'd probably just get you up to Anna's size… so what do you think about setting your goal for twenty? Or how about twenty-five? Maybe even thirty pounds?"

"I think that we should set our sights small for now," Cas points out, furrowing his brow at Dean's increasingly nonsensical behavior. "Twenty-five pounds sounds good for a longer-term goal, but ten is probably fine to start with? Just in case this works and gets Anna to stop being so ridiculous before I end up getting _too_ fat."

Dean actually laughs at that, and heartily. "Cas, with me as your feeder, I'll bet you twenty bucks I can get you up ten pounds before school's even out."

******

Cas takes that bet, in his own words, half out of desire to motivate Dean and half because he's certain that there's no way Dean can get him to put on ten pounds in three weeks. Little does he know what Dean has lurking up his sleeve.

Not that Dean's completely content with the scenario—in an ideal universe where they were doing this, Cas would be his boyfriend—but he's more than happy to just help Cas start putting on weight, no matter their relationship status. And to start Cas off, Dean institutes one simple rule: every day, at least once a day, Cas needs to have a huge glass of milkshake, cooked up from a recipe that Dean found online. There's something supposedly magic about the weight gain powder-cum-appetite stimulant that Dean mixes in with the ice cream and the heavy cream and the chocolate syrup.

Weekends are the best time for them to get to work on fattening Cas up, Dean finds, because Cas's parents are almost never home. Anna's usually off at Ruby's place and their other siblings are all out at college, so Dean and Cas have the Miltons' whole palatial house to themselves. Dean can break into his parents' impeccably stocked kitchen, making up all kinds of calorie-filled, fattening treats for Cas to work through: brownies and cakes, cookies and pies, ice cream sundaes with all the trimmings. No one's around to judge them for anything they do and Cas can just laze around in sweats and t-shirts, eating to his little heart's content.

Unfortunately, his heart's content needs some working on: even with the appetite stimulant going through his bloodstream, there's only so much that Cas can get down—every time Dean tries to get him to eat a whole medium pizza or a whole box of mac and cheese, made with a stick and a half of butter, Cas ends up complaining. He didn't complain about Dean taking snapshots at his first weigh-in, he didn't complain about this whole idea at first—but oh, he complains about the eating part.

"I can't eat any more, Dean," he insists one time, even as he dips a Dorito into the container of sour cream and shoves it in his mouth. And to his credit, Cas's stomach actually looks like it exists, right now. He's eaten enough to put a just barely detectable curve around his middle, and according to what Dean's scribbled in his notebook, that, "enough" really does mean a lot of food.

"Come on, man," Dean says with a sigh and flops down next to Cas on the sofa. "I know you can do it, and I've got some of those peanut butter brownies in the oven—just a few more chips and we'll call it good on these, okay?"

But all Cas does is sigh and shake his head, whine a little bit and mutter that no, really, Dean, he's full. Dean huffs. He's read about this kind of thing before, on all the forums that he has to hide in his Internet history, just in case Mom and Dad peek on his computer. Everyone who has anything to say about it says that there's no shame in a feedee needing some extra attention during a feeding session, especially if they're just starting off—their capacity will increase as they get gaining weight and get more used to stuffing themself like this. But until they get more used to it, there are tricks to help them out. Giving them more ice cream or high-calorie sodas, since they go down easier. Encouraging them as they eat.

And, more immediately important, rubbing their bellies so everything digests easier. Which is about all Dean can do, at this point. So, he reaches over and rests a hand on Cas's stomach. It's hard underneath his palm, almost solid, but it yields a little as he starts rubbing circles around Cas's bellybutton. Slouching back into the sofa some more, Cas lets his eyes slip shut and makes a contented, sighing noise—so Dean brings his other hand over and starts rubbing Cas down with both of them. Kneading his fingers into all the places where Cas's stomach is taut and stuffed to the brim. Working them into the hard curve, slowly, gently—which Cas doesn't really seem to mind. On the contrary, by the tim Dean's done? Cas is ready and mewling that he thinks he's hungry again.

Sometimes, his sighs get punctuated by burps and muttered _excuse me_ 's, but if anything, that just makes Dean want to rub his stomach more. It makes his heart do backflips and his own stomach growl not because he's hungry, but because he really, _really_ wants to keep rubbing Cas's tummy forever. Just to see what other sorts of noises Cas has in him. And after Cas chows down on a 9x9 pan of brownies, Dean gets another chance.

Weekdays are harder, because they have to work around school, but to his credit, Cas is a trooper about it. He carries a huge thermos full of milkshake around with him and most days, he chugs it all by second period. Which is good, because Dean always comes to school with a second thermos and there's no way he could get away with drinking it himself—Dad's already pissy enough that Dean's a dancer, not a pitcher or a football player, and he would probably lose his shit if Dean started gaining weight. Never mind the way that Dean could never hide any kind of tummy in his leotards. Gotta stay slim enough for unforgiving spandex—Dean's already got it bad enough because no matter how hard he works, no matter how much he denies himself, he never gets visible abs.

Cas doesn't have any such worries, though, so he's free to eat whatever Dean puts in front of him. He always gets one of the school's lunches, because his parents pay for them anyway, but on top of the lasagna, or the cheeseburger, or the chicken fingers, he gets an extra lunch from Dean. Some kind of sandwich, some kind of soup (mixed up with some more of the weight gain powder), and at least two different kinds of treats. Most of the time, Cas grouses about how much food Dean expects him to eat, and he almost always ends up unbuttoning his jeans, but he inevitably finishes everything. Then, after school, it's back home to work on homework and keeping Cas well-fed.

And the results speak for themselves: by the time their junior year lets out for summer, Cas is drinking at least three of Dean's weight gain shakes daily. He's put on ten pounds and started slowly filling out in all the places he's concave, with his waist clocking in at thirty inches and his hips measuring a full thirty-three. Maybe it's not really noticeable yet, but the gain is there, ever so slightly visible—not so much underneath his t-shirts, but definitely when he slips out of his top to let Dean take his measurements. It's just a little bit of pudge, pooching out over the waistband of his skinny jeans because they happen to be suffocatingly fitted. It's nowhere near how big Dean wishes Cas would get, but it's definitely a start.

It doesn't even matter that Dean's up twenty bucks; he spends every last cent buying more stuff to mix up Cas's secret shakes.

******

Summertime's modus operandi appears to be for Cas to be as lazy as possible, while eating as much as he can and more—and for all he feigns protest about his stomach's paltry capacity, Cas is more than happy to go along with this.

Every morning, he mixes up two servings, sometimes three, of Dean's special milkshake, sometimes mixing in chocolate milk or some leftover treats, just to make sure that he gets extra calories. Sometimes, he'll eat the leftover treats without putting them into the milkshake, just sitting at the kitchen table and chowing down on whatever brownies or chocolate cake or Oreo cream pie he couldn't finish the day before. And sometimes, he splits everything up, putting half of his treats into the milkshake and eating the other half outright, just to make sure that his plates are clean by the time that Dean shows up to get to work.

Sure, they're not on the meal plans and food schedules that Dean whips up for him—which are just supposed to keep Cas busy while Dean's off at his dance sessions—but Cas has never been one to shy away from getting extra credit.

Even so, the milkshakes always take precedence. They get him ready for his full days of eating. He drinks his concoctions while watching cartoons and waiting for Dean to come over and make his proper breakfasts—eggs cooked up in butter and bacon fat, not to mention more bacon or sausage than Cas has ever eaten in his life. Then, it's out to the sofa to slouch around in a haze, a warm, happy rush that comes from being so full, that slows Cas down and sometimes makes him conk right out, only waking up when Dean informs him that it's snack time and brings over a plate of brownies or a bag of chips.

Aside from breakfast, though, meals are mostly irrelevant constructions: Cas's entire day revolves around eating. He's allowed to read, or write, or watch TV, or do whatever the Hell he wants, as long as it burns as few calories as possible and preferably as long as he can do it while he's stuffing his face with whatever thing Dean decides to throw at him. The only thing that meals really do is punctuate the monotony of constant eating by throwing more food than usual at him. Painful, yes—Cas's stomach aches when he has to choke down Dean's delicious lasagnas, or his stuffed pasta shells, or his macaroni and cheese—but it's a good sort of pain. And, besides, it's inevitably followed by a tummy-rub and a nap.

And then there's Dean. There's the way that Dean watches him eat, eyes wide and mouth hanging open just enough that Cas can see it. There's the way that this continues not to make any sense, because Dean isn't interested in Cas, not even a little bit. He must be living vicariously through Cas, it stands to reason. After all, Dean's dancing keeps him on a fairly strict diet—no milkshakes, no pizza, and definitely no pie, regardless of how much Dean loves it. Cas would certainly understand if Dean got something out of watching other people eat the things that he can't. It would just make sense—so much more sense than Dean wanting anything out of Cas but friendship.

Cas isn't sure why, but no matter what, whenever he thinks about this fact, he always feels hungrier. He'll tear through pints of Ben and Jerry's or whole slices of triple-layer chocolate fudge cake without regard for how full he thought he was, and certainly without thinking about the brain freeze that comes with the ice cream. It makes no sense for him to feel any kind of _disappointment_ over this—he's known for ages that Dean isn't interested in him—but food makes sense. And eating makes sense. Everything makes more sense when Cas is stuffing his face.

It's a weigh-in day when Cas decides to investigate the effects that his eating's having on his body. Three weeks into summer and he's never once tried on his jeans, living out of sweatpants and loose pajamas because the elastic waistbands make it easier to eat his fill and then-some. But his t-shirts have started clinging to his middle–not riding up on him exactly (not yet, anyway), but straining a bit around his stomach, cleaving to his skin, stretching out whenever he wiggles into them. This can only mean good things for Cas's progress.

Cas definitely has a tummy, now, even when he isn't stuffed. When he looks down at his feet, his stomach protrudes ever so slightly and he can run his palm down a distinct curve. More than that, he can sink his fingers into flesh now—he can get his fingers around the rolls of flab that sit so comfortably on his midsection—which is more than he's ever been able to say for himself. There's a dip forming around his bellybutton, too—a place where his stomach's outward curve juts in a bit, before billowing out into a lower curve and the increasingly plush turns of his hips. Standing in his bedroom in just his underwear and a t-shirt, Cas even grabs at his own ass, just to confirm that it's fuller, softer, fatter than he remembers.

And his jeans, when he decides to try them on, are so much tighter than he remembers them being. Even with the ten pounds that he put on before school got out, he had no trouble getting his jeans on and zipped and buttoned—but today, they hit a snag around his thighs. It's the first the Cas has really noticed his thighs, and he gasps a bit at how much he has to work to get his jeans up over them, at how they jiggle just enough for him to see. For some reason, it didn't occur to him that gaining weight would mean gaining weight _everywhere_ , and his legs have never been anything but toothpicks. Even just a little bit of pudge stands out, makes them look so much bigger than they did before.

When Cas finally gets his jeans up to his waist, he can't help smiling to himself: his tummy, no matter how small it really is, sticks out just enough to mean that there's no way Cas can button his jeans, much less zip them, without putting in some effort. So, he takes a deep breath, sucking in his stomach—it's barely good enough to get the button and its hole to meet, and as soon as he gets the button in, it pops back out. Cas sighs and rolls his eyes. These skinny jeans are absurdly small, yes, he admits that—but there's certainly no cause for them to make this so difficult. But he wants to see what they look like when they're done up right, so he flops back onto his mattress, sucks in again, and does the button up.

This time, it works. He gets the button to stay in place, and even gets the zipper up. But there's something waiting for him when he sits up, something that he didn't expect: Anna, slouching against the doorway with her arms folded across her chest and a playful smirk quirking her lips.

"Looks like somebody's put on weight," she teases. "Not so easy to stay skinny when you're not allowed to drink skim milk anymore, is it, Cas?"

Cas's cheeks flush, hot and pink—he can't help it and he drops his hands to his waist, impulsively tugging his t-shirt down, as though this would do anything to hide his tummy. "It's only a few pounds. Ten pounds, at the most," he lies, and swallows thickly. "Get out of my room."

"I'm not in your room," she points out, and she's technically correct. Her feet are definitely on the other side of the carpet. "Anyway, it's no big deal or anything, right? I mean, if you want to be the chubby twin, then go ahead and be the chubby twin. It looks good on you, the whole… not about to topple over in a strong breeze look. Now, if you'll excuse me, Tubby, I'm going on a run with Ruby."

As she leaves, Cas feels his cheeks flush even hotter, and if it wouldn't expend any extra calories, he'd chase after her and beg her to call him Tubby again—he doesn't even know why he likes the way she called him that, but he wants to hear it again. He wants everyone to call him Tubby. And he knows exactly what it means, too: he's making progress. People are noticing his gain—and before Dean makes it back from his dance session, Cas downs two milkshakes and three huge slices of cake in celebration.

******

The numbers reflect well on Cas's progress, too: when he steps on Dean's scale, he weighs in at one-hundred and seventy-five pounds—a staggering number, not least because Cas can hardly wrap his head around gaining fifteen pounds in three weeks. According to Dean's tape measure, his waist is up to thirty-two-and-a-half inches, while his hips check in at thirty-five.

He's running his palms down his newfound pudge and gently jostling it around—sinking his fingers into it and grabbing hold and shaking, just to remind himself that it's really there—when Dean pipes up at him, "So, how does it feel?"

Dean waits for Cas to answer, blinking up at him expectantly, and when all Cas can come up with to say is, _what are you talking about?_ , he deflates a little. Sighs and says, "I just… I wanted to know how it feels. Gaining weight. Getting chubby. Eating like this… How does it feel? I just wanted to know because—"

"Because your diet means that you _can't_ eat like this?" Cas blurts out before he can think to stop himself.

But at least Dean blushes, and nods, and says that of course that's what he meant—"It's a whole lot of living vicariously going on over here, and y'know, if it ever gets creepy or whatever, just tell me to stop and I will, but… what's it feel like, Cas?"

Cas wrinkles his nose—why would Dean lie about something that makes so much sense, that's so understandable? Moreover, why would Dean lie to his best friend? It doesn't make any sense, but no matter. Pondering emotional things is pointless when Cas is basically incompetent at them in the first place. So he shakes his head—just to shake some sense into himself—and huffs.

"I haven't honestly given much thought to how it feels, Dean," he says and rests his hand over the fullest part of his stomach, the part where his t-shirt's tightest. "I know enough about myself and my reactions to things to know that I'm enjoying this more than I thought I would, but… well. I suppose that it feels different? Not bad different, simply… different. Being perpetually full is nice, even when it hurts—and I do enjoy your cooking and your tummy-rubs very much."

"Well, that's good—I'd hate to feel like my efforts were going to waste with you or anything like that." With a sigh, Dean fusses around, scratching the back of his neck. And he looks so ridiculously disappointed as he says, "So how about another bet? My instructor wants me to lose a couple pounds. Nothing too much, just enough to tone up a little and not look so pudgy in the leotards—"

"But you _don't_ look pudgy in your leotards." Cas furrows his brow and frowns down at Dean. He's watched Dean dance before, and if anything, Dean looks lean. Lithe. Perfect—like the work he puts into denying himself what he wants is actually amounting to something good.

Dean holds his hands up in mock surrender. "Hey, man, it's Alastair's words—not mine. He says I've got too much body fat and I don't want to get knocked out of the running for the Mouse King when we do _The Nutcracker_ , so that's the way it is. You wanna hear the bet or are we just gonna bitch about my dance instructor all day?"

Cas rolls his eyes and supposes that they probably should get on to the bet, then—but, really, he'd prefer to rip Dean's instructor a cornucopia of new ones over his impossible, fascistic standards.

"They're not fascistic standards—they're just the standards that I have to live with as a dancer, okay? They suck, but I knew what I was in for when I wanted to keep dancing past second grade." He sighs, more irritatedly than Cas thinks he ought to sound. "Anyway, here's the deal: I weighed in at one-eighty-five yesterday, and Alastair wants me to drop ten to fifteen pounds. If you've got ten pounds on me by your next weigh-in, I'll get some calipers and we'll start measuring your body fat percentage, too. If you don't, then you've got to double your gain by the weigh-in after next. Sound like a deal?"

It sounds like a deal to Cas, but that doesn't make him any less right about how absurd Dean's dance instructor is.


	2. Chapter 2

Leading up to the next weigh-in, Cas's diet switches to almost entirely liquids. Milkshakes and ice cream are less filling, after all, and they usually have more calories than whatever else Dean wants him to eat, so he can get down more of them in a day than he could while also stuffing his face full of solid food. On his worst days—the days when his calorie count comes in the lowest—Cas still manages to drink five milkshakes and get down six pints of Ben and Jerry's. On his best days, he'll end up with eight milkshakes gone and ten, one time twelve empty pints piled up on his parents' coffee table, give or take some lasagna or some mac and cheese.

Cas runs the math on it all, too, and writes the figures down in Dean's notebook. A pint is two cups, and each half-cup is a serving. This means that a pint of his ice cream has four servings. Each serving has three hundred-and-twenty-five calories in it, so each pint of ice cream has thirteen-hundred calories. This mean that, on the day when he gets down twelve whole pints, he's downed fifteen thousand, six hundred calories—and that's just from the ice cream. There were almost four thousand calories in the family size macaroni and cheese (made with a stick and a half of butter), and easily a good eleven thousand or so in the milkshakes, if Cas has done the math right.

Dean's jaw falls open when he reads those figures, but it all adds up: Cas managed to eat thirty-thousand calories in a single day. He's not even sure how he managed it, in retrospect. He eats so mindlessly anymore, the calories just rack up, one after the other. But it all adds up to prospects looking good for the bet. Alastair gave Dean four weeks to lose some weight, and Cas fully intends to have more than ten pounds on Dean by the time they weigh in. He fully intends to weigh at least two hundred pounds by the time their senior year starts, and every day makes that seem more and more likely to happen.

On top of keeping his daily calorie counts up, Cas tries to pay more attention to how it feels, stuffing himself like this—it's only fair, after all. He might get the excitement of eating like this, but Dean's working out harder than ever and dieting more strictly than Cas thinks is right. Dean's actually going on runs in the morning with Ruby and Anna and Dean _hates_ running—he used to say that the only acceptable time to run was during a zombie apocalypse—so Cas pays closer mind to how he feels when he's stuffed full of different things. The more solid the food, the sleepier Cas feels after eating it. And ice cream and milkshakes tend to leave his growing belly with more of a softer, sloshing feel to it. Moving almost seems like a bad idea—if he didn't know any better, Cas would be afraid of spilling his belly everywhere.

For what it's worth—and it's worth a great deal, at least it is to Cas—more people start to notice that he's putting on weight. As his jeans get harder and harder to do up, Dean starts insisting that Cas meet him at the Roadhouse for lunch—if it can really be called lunch when Dean has a salad with grilled chicken while Cas has two bacon cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, two extra-large milkshakes, and a two-person brownie sundae for dessert. Jo brings everything over with an incredulous smirk on her face and preemptively asks if Cas is gonna need a takeout bag. He's certain that his jeans will explode off of him, but still, he finishes everything, just to show off how much food he can take.

Back at home, it's a similar story: Mother and Father may not be around that often, but when they are, Cas makes sure to be eating something—anything, as long as it's "not good for him"—just because it makes them sigh and ask if he shouldn't consider watching his weight more carefully. Anna's gone on a diet and lost ten whole pounds, they tell him; she's working on losing another five, Caspian. Perhaps another ten. Surely, she'd be more than happy to help Cas out with his developing weight problem, if he'd just ask her. Cas shrugs and supposes that he might consider it, then cuts himself another slice of Dean's special fudge cake, which he scarfs up with two servings of whipped cream and a pint of Phish Food for good measure.

They ask him if this is all because they took away his skim milk to make Anna happier—and no matter how right they are in guessing that, Cas can't exactly tell them so. So he just shrugs, and eats his cake, and guesses that he's put on some weight since losing the skim milk but that he doesn't really mind it. Mother purses her lips and nods; Father rolls his eyes and sighs; and Cas helps himself to yet another slice of cake in celebration of their obvious disapproval.

At Meg and Ruby's Fourth of July pool party, Cas certainly turns heads. He shows up in one of Dean's old t-shirts, which doesn't disguise the fact that he's gained weight but hides the full extent of it, until Cas shucks it off. Revealing himself—revealing the way that his swimming shorts strain around his hips and ass—gets more than one gasp out of someone. But most eyes, he notices, go to his tummy. Go to the way Cas had to tie his shorts up underneath his stomach's lower curve, rather than getting them all the way up to his waist. And while he's chowing down on his eighth enormous brownie, Meg decides to come over and ask what the Hell is going on with him these days—after all, she's barely seen him all summer and now he shows up to her party looking like he got some back-alley reverse liposuction treatment done to him.

Cas just shrugs and supposes that he's put on some weight. "But I hardly see why it has to be a bad thing," he says. "Maybe I just got tired of being so thin. Maybe I got tired of being my parents' skinny little golden child."

Meg arches an eyebrow at him and smirks, leans closer to him on her deck chair. "Well, don't tell anybody I said so," she says, "but it looks good on you, Clarence. I mean that, too. You look… I don't know, kinda happier. And Dean sure seems to like it."

"Dean and I are just friends, Meg. I'm fairly certain that he wants to ask out Rhonda Hurley, anyway." Which, really, is all the impetus that Cas needs to keep stuffing his face, to keep eating until he's pinned back to the chair and whining for Dean to come over and rub his stuffed belly.

******

By the time that weigh-in day comes around on July sixteenth, even Cas's sweatpants and pajamas are starting to feel snug on him. None of his t-shirts can stay in place around his belly, no matter how much he tugs at them. Most of them ride up to his bellybutton, exposing the bottom of a deepening hollow, not to mention the rolls of fat starting to encroach on Cas's back and his burgeoning love-handles.

Never mind the way that his shirts cling to his softening chest. He may not be fat yet—Cas doesn't think that this will happen for a while, though if he had his own way about it, he'd probably wake up tomorrow and weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds—but regardless, Cas is certainly chubby by now. Hopefully, he's gotten himself over the line of being medically overweight. He has to be overweight by now. All this work has to amount to something.

Because Dean wants to keep Cas in suspense, he makes Cas measure and weigh him first, and the results say that Dean's diet was a definite success. He weighs in at a scant one-seventy, and when Cas wraps the tape-measure around his waist, he comes up with only thirty inches. Dean seems pleased—not to mention convinced that this all but guarantees him Alastair's favor and the role of the Mouse King—and with a playful slap on the shoulder, he bids Cas get up and hold still to get his own measurements.

He's not afraid, but Cas still has to close his eyes when Dean reaches over with the measuring tape and wraps it around his waist. He only opens them again when Dean announces that Cas has gotten up to thirty-six inches around. His hips are a similarly encouraging story, a full forty inches in circumference. As he turns to face the scale, Cas takes a deep breath and crosses his fingers on both hands. He steps up and mentally counts down the three seconds that the scale takes to weigh him. And when he looks down at the digital screen, a smile erupts on his face—he grins so much and so hard that it actually hurts his mouth.

"One-ninety-five, Dean," he announces and reaches down to rub his palm over his belly. "The scale's final verdict is that I weigh one hundred and ninety-five pounds."

"Holy _shit_ ," Dean says, voice barely above a whisper. He lets out a low, impressed whistle, then goes quiet for a moment—for long enough that Cas starts idly playing with his stomach, squeezing his paunch between both hands. "Jesus, Cas—I mean—you do realize that this means you've got a full _twenty- **five**_ pounds on me by now?"

Cas nods. "I do realize that, Dean. I also realize that I've gained twenty pounds since our last weigh-in and forty-five in the ten weeks since we started this. I suppose that all of those milkshakes and ice cream binges have really done the trick for me."

"Yeah, I guess they have," Dean says—and for another moment, he goes quiet. Only this time, Cas notices why: Dean's staring at him. Or, more accurately, Dean is staring at Cas's stomach—and realizing that makes Cas's insides squirm. As his cheeks go and flush hot pink, he wrinkles his nose and ducks his chin, which just serves to make him think about how his face is filling out, getting rounder and more cherubic—which, in turn, just makes Cas's blush that much darker. Pointlessly, he fusses with the hem of his t-shirt, trying to pull it down, even though he only pulled his (suffocatingly skin-tight) boxer-briefs up to his belly's lower curve, rather than up to his waist—there's no way that Cas can hide any part of his fat body, now.

And the strangest thing about this? Is that Cas doesn't even really _mind_ the way Dean's staring at him, the way that Dean's eyes trace over every new bump and curve that's filling out Cas's frame. He doesn't mind the way that his blush creeps lower and lower, seeping out onto his neck, and he doesn't really mind it when Dean says, _I mean, shit, you're really getting chubby on me, aren't you, Pretty Boy?_ —at that, the only thing that bothers Cas about that sentence is the way Dean calls him _Pretty Boy_. And that's only a bother because it doesn't make any sense.

Dean's only working as Cas's feeder because he gets a vicarious thrill out of watching Cas eat all the things that, as a dancer, he can't have. Dean doesn't really have any romantic and/or sexual intentions with Cas. If he had any romantic and/or sexual intentions with Cas, then surely, he would've said something by now, wouldn't he? Of course he would have. In Anna's words, Cas's crush on Dean is so obvious, people can see it from Pluto—ergo, Dean has to know that Cas has said crush, and if he knows, then surely, he would've acted on it, if he reciprocated at all. Since he hasn't acted on it, Cas can only conclude that his so-called pining goes unrequited.

And yet, even knowing this, Cas doesn't stop himself from saying, "Dean? I have a request to make, if it's not too much trouble?"

Dean blinks at him, then nods and says sure thing, and Cas wishes that this made him feel any better about what he's going to ask.

"I—when it gets to be dinner time? You know how you've always been so encouraging with me? I think I'd like it more if, this time, you said things that were more… embodiment based? Do you understand?"

Dean thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head. "Not really? No?"

Cas sighs. "I want you to tell me less about how I'm doing at eating everything, and how you know I can get through the meal just fine… and more about my body. Tell me how fat I'm getting now. Tell me what a pig I am, eating like this. Tell me that I'll be as big as a house soon, if I don't watch out for my weight. That sort of thing, maybe?"

Dean furrows his brow and blinks at Cas, then says, "Wait, you want me to make fun of you?"

"In so many words, yes." Cas shrugs as though he asks this sort of thing of Dean every day. As though it's completely normal to ask his best friend to humiliate him like this. "I would very much appreciate it if you made fun of me while I'm eating."

******

For dinner, Cas wants to try something out, but according to him, it requires him to get dressed up in something other than his pajamas. Dean doesn't entirely get why, but then again, Cas's talent with explaining things is basically nonexistent—so while Dean makes up the mac and cheese—a box mix with a stick and a half of butter, layered in a pan and covered with extra cheese—he lets Cas wander off to do whatever he thinks needs doing. Nominally, Cas is supposed to be snacking on a bag of chips and some sour cream, but he swears that he's finished with them, and Dean has no reason not to trust that he's telling Dean the truth.

What Cas is planning becomes evident when he stomps back downstairs with his skinny jeans and one of his old button-ups in hand. He wants to pop his buttons—son of a bitch, Cas wants to pop his fucking buttons. Considering he wants Dean to humiliate him while he eats, Cas must really be getting off on the idea of how big he's getting—and he must want to prove it somehow, as though it's not enough that he's getting a belly and love-handles and thicker, jiggling thighs. As though all the comments that he's gotten from people somehow don't prove that Cas has put on weight lately. As though it's not enough that Dean can barely be in the same room with Cas without worrying that he's gonna have a hard-on to deal with…

Not that Dean's been checking Cas out or anything, watching him while he eats or whatever. Not that he's ever felt his mouth go dry when Cas wears the skin-tight short-short pajama bottoms that he got for Christmas and gives Dean a glimpse of how much bigger and softer his thighs have gotten. Not that he's watching from the kitchen now as Cas strips out of his sweats.

Except that Dean is _totally_ watching from the kitchen now as Cas strips out of his sweats and he can't help licking at his lips when he sees the angry red marks lining Cas's waist. Sure, he might've gotten to see them up close earlier, when he was taking Cas's measurements—but there's something different about seeing them long-distance. There's something about being able to see more of Cas's waistline, about being able to see the way that Cas's belly pushes out against his t-shirt, makes the thing ride up over his bellybutton, as he heaves a deep breath. There's some inexplicable _something_ about being able to see the way that Cas's whole body seems to jiggle as he writhes out of his shirt and drops it on the floor.

Goddamn it all to Hell, Cas's thighs might not touch each other yet, but something hot still pools and twists around in Dean's stomach, watching them shake. Dean can hardly even appreciate the way that Cas's chest is filling out because of his damn thighs—Cas's legs have only ever been the skinniest parts of him, and now, all Dean can think of is how it might feel to have those thighs curled around his waist. It just gets worse as Cas starts trying to wriggle into his jeans. He gets them up his calves okay, but they hit the first snag around his _fucking thighs_. Cas yanks them up with some weird familiarity, like he's been practicing for this or something—only for the jeans to hit another snag around the plump swell of his ass. Which probably makes sense, now that Cas actually has an ass for jeans to snag on.

He manages, through some strategic wiggling and grunting, to get the jeans up to his waist but Dean has no idea what Cas is planning to do with that. He's put on eight inches around his waist and ten around his hips. And those jeans were pretty snugly fitted before he started getting chubby—even now, the seams on his thighs look like they're busting ass just to hold him in and judging from the way his belly pushes the flaps apart, there's no way he's going to get them _zipped_ , much less buttoned. Cas sucks in, but it's pointless and he has to know that. But some more wiggling around gets the flaps down underneath his belly's lower curve with the whole thing pooching out over the waistband—Dean would call it a muffin-top, but that wouldn't really do it justice.

Next, Cas sucks in again and wriggles around, finally getting the waistband up to where it belongs, with a sizable proper muffin-top crunching down over it and his lower belly safely contained. Even though he's managed to get the jeans done up, it's a precarious arrangement. He hasn't even stuffed himself too much today and the jeans already look like they could pop. There's no way it can be comfortable for him, but Cas still smiles fondly as he looks down at his belly, rubs his hands over it and shoves his paunch out even further, squeezes himself and sinks his fingers into what looks like soft flesh. Swallowing thickly, turning his attention back down to the macaroni, Dean can't help wondering what it would feel like to get his hands all over Cas's belly, all over his love-handles, all over his _pudge_.

And he should focus—God, Dean should really focus, and he should really stop checking out his best friend—but he still lets himself look back over when he hears Cas grunting and gets the idea that Cas might be trying to get his shirt on now. Dean's right, of course. And once again, he has no idea how Cas is going to get his buttons done up: he can barely get the top buttons done up, never mind the ones around his belly. But still, Cas soldiers on, sucking in his gut as much as he can. He sucks in enough that, when he turns to the side, Dean can barely tell that Cas even has a tummy—sure, he still looks like he's gained some weight, but after forty-five pounds, it's probably going to be next to impossible to hide that anymore—and his fingers deftly force each button into its hole.

When Cas lets his breath go—when he lets his belly surge back out to its full capacity—Dean's certain that the buttons are going to come off right here and now. But they don't. The fabric bunches up, straining to hold him him, and a strip of Cas's pale skin is clearly visible in between all the buttons. Never mind how much of his stomach is visible, thanks to the hem riding up on him. Dean licks at his lips again—he knows he's staring, he knows that he should fucking stop—but he doesn't look away until Cas looks up from his belly and whispers, "Dean?"

******

That's twice now that Cas has caught Dean staring at him, and as he sits down to dinner, it still doesn't make any sense. Why would Dean be staring at Cas the way he was when he doesn't have any romantic and/or sexual intentions with Cas? Why would Dean stare at Cas instead of just saying that his intentions have become something other than friendship? Why would Dean withhold his affections, anyway?

Cas doesn't have answers for himself, but once he starts eating, he doesn't really care. His first course is a clam chowder soup that Dean's mother made from scratch—Dean's clearly added more cream and butter to the mixture, but considering their purpose here, Cas can't really blame him for that—and besides, it makes the taste a little richer. Without even thinking, Cas just picks up the bowl and starts slurping the soup down, trying to get it into his stomach as quickly as possible. He has several buttons to pop tonight and they're not going to come off if he wastes his time on liquids. He needs to get to the foods that will really fill him up, that will really push his stomach to its limits.

"Well, look who's hungry. How totally not surprising," Dean says as he refills Cas's bowl—Cas's breath hitches in his throat, ever so slightly, as he tries to force himself to look up at Dean. "I mean, look at you, Cas—of course you're fucking hungry. You've been eating all day and you're going at that soup anyway. No wonder you're such a fucking fat-ass. Oink, oink, oink, y'know what I mean, Piggy?"

Despite his apprehensiveness about this idea, Dean's really getting into the part so well—it makes Cas's toes curl up, and it makes him want to get the second round of soup down even faster, just to spite the character that Dean's playing. Just to make Dean come up with more things to say about Cas and how fat he's getting. That's the whole point of the button-popping, too: Cas wants to pop them for its own sake, but he needs Dean as a witness—he needs Dean to be here so someone can see the proof of Cas's gain manifesting itself. He chugs the second bowl of soup even faster than he got the first one down, breathing through his nose so he doesn't have to take his mouth away from the bowl.

Second course is the macaroni and cheese, two boxes of buttered shells with Velveeta cheese sauce, piled up in a thirteen-by-nine pan with an extra coating of cheese baked on top. Dean's gotten more creative than ever in making this up, and Cas intends to appreciate it—but he can't linger too long in eating. He wolfs down one plate without hardly thinking and certainly without pausing. Around the middle of the second place, his stomach starts to hurt—it's that increasingly familiar sensation of being full-but-not-entirely-so, and Cas lets out a burp as though this might clear out some space inside him. Finally, as he's nearing the end of his third plate, he takes a deep breath and lets it out and— _rrrrip! snap, snap, snap! tink, tink, tink, tink, tink._

Cas sighs heavily as his belly surges forward to its full girth—as much as it can get without busting his pants, anyway—nudging out toward his lap. He reaches down, brushing his fingers over the curve of his belly and the fabric of his shirt. But he hits a place where three buttons are missing—where the buttons around the fullest part of his stomach have ripped off—and his lips curl into a smile, his chest flushes warm with pride. It doesn't last that long, though. Because when Dean comes over with the pan, instead of dishing up more food for Cas, he sets it on the table and crouches on his knees. When he comes back up, he has the buttons in hand and he arches an eyebrow at Cas like he honestly had no idea that this was coming.

"Jesus Christ, Cas—I mean, are you fucking _serious_?" he says, holding his palm out so Cas can see the buttons resting there. "What the Hell happened to you, man? You used to be, like, model skinny and now you're busting out of all your clothes. Just how fucking _fat_ are you gonna let yourself get? Two hundred pounds isn't all that far off, you know—are you going to go for two-fifty, next? Maybe even three-fucking-hundred? Are you trying to push yourself up to three hundred fucking pounds, Cas?"

Cas's cheeks twinge, flushing scarlet as something hot worms its way around the pit of Cas's stomach. But he pastes his smile back on and blinks up at Dean. "I don't really know, Dean," he says flatly, spearing a forkful of his macaroni and shoving it in his mouth. Once he's swallowed, he goes on, "I want to weigh at least two hundred pounds for my physical early next month, and I would like to medically qualify as obese by the time that school starts up again. I believe that this will happen at two-hundred and sixteen pounds, if I've done the math right for my height. So my short term goal is to weigh in at two-hundred and sixteen."

Dean's eyes nearly bug out of his skull and he drops character for a moment just to gape at Cas—but he picks up right where he left off, saying, "Can you even imagine what you're going to look like if this keeps up, though? You keep gaining like you're doing and you won't be able to get out the goddamn door for school or fit at your fucking desk. Who cares about this skinny twin, chubby twin bullshit—with how you eat and the way Anna's been working out, you know what you're really gonna be? The skinny twin and the obese blob that _wants_ to be a twin."

With a huff, Dean sits down in the chair next to Cas and shoves the pan of macaroni over toward Cas. "Go on and eat it out of the pan, Tubby," he says. "I know you want to—you don't have to use plates if you're just going to chow down on all of it anyway."

Cas polishes off the rest of the pan, but much to his dismay, it's not enough to send the button flying off his jeans. He doesn't get that joy until he's almost done working his way through his dessert, two servings of Dean's special milkshake and four huge slices of fudge cake. As Cas claws his way through choking down the food, Dean's careful to throw out more insults—"Have you even looked at your thighs lately, Cas? Because I have and they're enormous. I mean, seriously, they've really blubbered out. You've got yourself a pair of fucking thunder thighs"—and no matter how much he blushes, no matter how much his skin crawls in shame, no matter how much his stomach hurts from food and from writhing around, Cas just keeps right on eating.

 _That's right_ , he thinks, smirking to himself as he finishes the third slice of cake. _Tell me how fat I'm getting—tell me how much of a pig I am—tell me I'll be as big as a house by graduation if I don't watch out. It's all so true, too. And you can't fucking stop me, either. You just can't._

When it finally happens, Cas has finished his massive milkshake. He's partway through the last slice of cake. Breathing's gotten difficult by now, with his stomach expanded to accommodate everything he's shoving into it, but Cas still manages to get a deep one down. And when he lets it go—when he lets his belly flop back forward—he finally hears the noise that he's been waiting for: _snap! ping!_ —and his belly really surges out, shoving his zipper down and pushing his fly apart. It really nudges out into his lap, by now, and when he looks over to Dean for an insult, Dean doesn't have anything to say.

He just stares at Cas in total awe, and whispers, "Oh my God, Cas, that was just—and you're just—I mean—you are _awesome_."

"Thank you," Cas says with a smile, taking another huge forkful of cake. He slouches back into his chair, bringing the plate with him so there's less moving to do from there to his mouth. "But I believe that finishing this and getting a belly rub would be even more awesome."


	3. Chapter 3

Two weeks after their last weigh-in night, two weeks after Cas made a scene at dinner, he's sitting in the waiting room of his doctor's office, waiting for his annual physical. Because he still hasn't bothered going to the store for new clothes, he's wearing a pair of Dean's old jeans again and, even though they're thirty-twos—two sizes bigger than any jeans Cas has ever owned himself—Cas has to button them underneath his belly. They're still rather uncomfortable, at that, snug around the thighs with the waistband digging into Cas's flesh. He's wearing one of Dean's t-shirts, too, and even though it's bigger than anything in Cas's wardrobe, it fails to hide the rounding, pudgy outline of his growing belly.

Not that Cas really wants to hide anything about his body. He only even remembers to bother tugging the hem of the t-shirt back into place because he catches some woman staring at him, staring at how the t-shirt's ridden up to his bellybutton. If he had his way, Cas would be in an even smaller shirt—one whose hem would never stay in place, one where the hollow of his bellybutton would be visible even through the fabric—and showing off his belly in all of its glory, but Mother and Father wouldn't let him out of the house when he tried to leave in one of his own shirts. They told him to put on something else, something that covered up a little bit of skin— _at least have some respect for yourself, Caspian, since you haven't listened to us at all about the diet._

As he waits for his turn with Doctor Roberts and her staff of nurses, Cas chugs some milkshake out of an enormous thermos. He got creative with mixing this one up: there are two extra scoops of weight gain powder in it, plus strawberry syrup mixed in with the chocolate, two different kinds of ice cream (chocolate fudge brownie and strawberry surprise), and a big slice of Dean's fudge cake with the raspberry ganache. The end result is better than any other milkshake Cas has had before—just the right mix of different kinds of sweetness, with a little bit of fruity tang to it—and Cas goes at it like there's gold at the bottom of his thermos. It's supposed to last him through his appointment and he's half-convinced he'll have it finished by the time he's called in.

He doesn't finish it by the time Nurse McClellan calls him back and starts to get his vitals, but Cas is okay with that. Mostly, he's okay with it because the distraction is much better. The distraction is the countdown to stepping on the office's scale, the way that Cas's heart flutters in his chest at the thought of seeing how many new pounds have crept onto his frame. His temperature's normal and he's still five-foot-eleven, same height that he was last year, but his blood pressure's up a bit—not enough to be entirely worrisome, but enough that Nurse McClellan runs it twice, just to be sure the machine's not malfunctioning. She tells Cas to relax and take a few deep breaths, and he does, but the result is still the same.

Finally, it's time. Cas gets up out of the chair Nurse McClellan had him in and turns to face the scale. He can't help smirking down at it as he toes out of his sneakers, sets his thermos and his cellphone down. The way his body feels—the way his thighs are almost touching now, the way his ass and belly jiggle when he moves—Cas must be up to two-hundred pounds by now. Perhaps even more than that. He doesn't know what he'll do if he's still missing that milestone—but surely, he must have reached it already. Even though this notion makes his heart do backflips, Cas closes his eyes when he climbs up on the scale's platform, and when he opens them, the black digital numbers are still climbing. They stop after a moment and Cas can't help but gasp as he stares down at the screen and sees the result: _201.5_.

Nurse McClellan clicks her tongue in a way that sounds both sympathetic and disapproving. "Don't you worry about that number, Sugar," she tells him with a smile. "Everybody's weight goes through some fluctuations during puberty, and I'm sure the doctor will be more than happy to help you get on a diet. Slim you down all nice and trim for senior prom, right? Right."

She must think that Cas's gasping was because he can't believe how much weight he's gained—and in a way, she's right. Six-and-a-half pounds in two weeks is certainly nothing to scoff at and Cas has been busting his ass to make it get fatter. Nurse McClellan is just off in thinking that Cas would want to lose the weight, in thinking that he wants to slim down for prom. As she leads him through all the other tests (vision and hearing and whether or not he can balance on one leg—which he finds more difficult than he remembers, teetering under his new weight), Cas can't help pondering the opposite, in fact. By the time she brings him into an exam room, he's not even wondering how big he'll be by prom, at this rate; he's wondering how big he could possibly get by prom.

Cas sits on the exam room table and fidgets with his t-shirt's hem, nudging it down and tugging it into place only to pull it up again. He brings it up over the top of his belly's curve, just underneath the softening mounds of his chest, so he can get a view of all his paunch while he waits for Doctor Roberts to show up, so he can properly appreciate the way his belly touches his chubby thighs. He can't help touching his belly, either, sinking his fingers into his flab and squeezing rolls of fat up in his fingers, running his fingertips over his stretch-marks, squashing his tummy between both palms so he pushes all his fat out further. And it's intoxicating, it really is—Cas's heart thuds against his ribcage and his head spins as he thinks about how much weight he's put on in the past three months, about how much chunkier he's gotten, about how much bigger he's still going to get.

He only lets up and yanks his shirt back down when Doctor Roberts knocks on the door—and at that, Cas fumbles, half-convinced that she's going to catch him in the act of fondling his pudge. She doesn't catch him, but only barely. Cas tries to smile at her—tries to look as though he's been doing nothing potentially strange or awkward—but he wilts a bit and feels his cheeks flush warm underneath the way she frowns and arches her eyebrow at him. Clearly, she's not impressed, and Cas can guess why.

He's right about the reason, too. The first words out of her mouth are small talk, telling him that he did admirably in most of his tests and that he's, for the most part and so far as they can tell without running blood-work, perfectly healthy. "But," she says. "I'd like to have a discussion with you, Caspian. About your weight. First of all, I'd like it if you would stand up so I can get some measurements, please."

Cas didn't expect for this to happen, but he complies, sliding off the exam room table and tugging his shirt up again so Doctor Roberts can more easily get at his hips and waistline. She pulls a tape-measure just like Dean's out of her pocket and it's cold when she wraps it around his waist. As she scribbles down the figures on Cas's chart, she tells him that his waist is up to thirty-eight inches around while his hips are up to forty-two—no wonder nothing fits him anymore with plus-size measurements like that, Cas thinks and tries to keep his face as neutral as possible. Just so she doesn't notice anything's off about him and start asking him any invasive questions about it all.

Next, the calipers come out of her pocket. They're silver and they look almost like a pair of scissors with some fobs attached, and Cas winces when the pointy ends sink into a roll of his flab. He doesn't even know what the measurements are or what they really mean, just that they're something to do with his body fat percentage and just that he gets that sick, familiar twisting feeling in his stomach when Doctor Roberts sighs and mutters that something's not so good about that reading. With a wave of her hand, she bids Cas to please sit down again, and once he does, she wheels a chair over from the desk and takes a seat herself, folds her hands up in her lap and gives him a long, scrutinizing look.

"Caspian," she starts with a huff, "are you aware that you've gained forty-five pounds since your last physical?"

"Fifty-one-and-a-half," he corrects her, and repeats himself when she says, _excuse me, Cas?_ "I've actually gained fifty-one-and-a-half pounds, Doctor. I've been keeping track of this and I lost six pounds before I started gaining weight—my weight slipped down to one-fifty, it was two-oh-one-point-five today, and it's a simple matter of subtraction. I've gained fifty-one-and-a-half pounds since I started."

Doctor Roberts furrows her brow at Cas as though he's a particularly confusing piece of modern art. "Yes, well… I'm afraid that I have to be the bearer of bad news. Given your weight and your measurements, you are clinically overweight in two senses of the term. Your body mass index is twenty-eight-point-one, which is getting very close to one of the clinical definitions of obesity—only fifteen pounds off from it, in fact. Furthermore, your body fat percentage came up at twenty-one-and-a-half percent. What this means is that about forty-three-and-half pounds of your body mass are made up of fat."

Cas tries not to lick his lips. He tries not to think about Doctor Roberts calling him Tubby. He tries not to think about the heat pooling in the pit of his stomach and the way that he's suddenly _starving_ —he just swallows thickly, and nods, and supposes that he's gotten kind of chubby, yes. "But I honestly don't mind it all that much?" he says as though he has no idea how she might rebut that. "I mean, it's my body, my choice?"

Doctor Roberts arches an eyebrow at him again. "Well, yes, it is your body and your choice, and you can certainly choose to be overweight, if you wish—but Caspian, why would you choose to sign up for something that means being at an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes?"

"It's possible to be both fat and healthy," Cas points out, heart sinking guiltily in his chest because he knows that he hasn't been gaining weight in the healthiest fashion. Just this morning, going back upstairs to change his shirt left him slightly winded when he never would've flinched at that three months ago. He drops both hands to his belly, just for the sake of rubbing little circles around it, just for the sake of sinking his palms into his flesh—it's comforting, in its own way, to have his hands on his chunky stomach, to feel them running over all the places where he's gained weight and gotten softer, to sink his fingers into his supple flab.

Doctor Roberts sighs at him, and supposes that Cas has a point—"But I'd still like you to read over these pamphlets I have for you. They might help you out a little," she adds, pulling them out of her lab-coat's pocket. There are three of them, and they all have titles like, _Childhood Obesity and You: What You Can Do To Control Your Weight_ —Cas fights the impulse to roll his eyes and, once he's gotten the all clear to go, he leaves them on the floor of his car.

******

When Cas gets back home from Doctor Roberts's office, Dean's already back from a dance session, waiting for him with a veritable smorgasbord made up for lunch. Stuffed pasta shells, clam chowder soup, and a pan of brownies for dessert and for Cas to snack on until dinner. Cas smiles at the food, then at Dean. If anything, the scene with Doctor Roberts—her words and her measurements and her inane pamphlets—just make Cas more committed to their project of getting him fat, of getting him over the line into technical obesity by the time that their senior year starts up.

Simply getting chubby isn't good enough anymore. Cas is already chubby—he's heavier than he's ever been and decidedly the chunky twin, out of himself and Anna—and while it's certainly nice, he needs something _more_.

Without hesitation—and without getting them from upstairs himself—he changes into a pair of sweats and gets to work on eating everything in sight, and by the end of the day, his belly's stuffed so full that no amount of tugging at the hem will get Dean's old shirt to stay in place. He conks out on the sofa rather than going up to his bedroom, and when he wakes up in the morning, Dean's already there, bringing him over a blender full of milkshake for Cas to chug. He's mixed things up, this time, making a shake that's heavy on the strawberry flavoring, with only a hint of chocolate, but Cas still gets all of it down and smiles.

As the summer winds down, Cas can _feel_ that he's gaining weight, and not just because even his loosest pajama bottoms are clinging to his meaty thighs and slicing into his waistline before he's even started eating. He and Dean aren't going to weigh him again until September first, the first day of school, but they make a special trip out to the mall to get Cas some bigger clothes. Much as Cas would like to avoid this bullet—much as he'd prefer not to waste the calories—he really can't anymore: not even Dean's old clothes fit him, he can't eat comfortably anymore, and wearing sweats to school every day would get boring, sooner or later.

Although Cas can wriggle into a pair of thirty-eight jeans without too much difficulty, he and Dean buy his clothes a few sizes up—at the rate Cas is gaining, even if it slows a bit while they're in school, these forty-fours will probably be tight on him before he knows it. At the latest, he's certain he'll be busting out of them by Christmas. And to that end, Cas insists on swinging by the food court, so he can start compensating for the calories he wasted trying on clothes. By the time he's done chowing down on his Panda Express and his Häagen-Dazs, Cas can barely lift his arms, much less rub his belly on his own, and in full view of countless people—several of them his and Dean's classmates—Cas mewls for Dean to do it.

The work that Cas puts in pays off, as well. On the first day of school, Dean comes over early, just to make sure that they have time to weigh and measure Cas before first period. While Cas thinks about chugging two milkshakes down before then—while he thinks about the way his thighs have finally started touching, rubbing up against each other while he walks—Dean wraps the tape measure around his waist and announces that Cas is up to forty-and-a-half inches. His hips are up to forty-five. True to his word after the last bet, Dean bought calipers and using them for the first time, he finds that Cas's body fat percentage has climbed to twenty-four.

"Almost fifty-two pounds of fat," Cas explains, and watches as Dean's mouth falls open, either at the number itself or at Cas's ability to run mental math. Possibly at both.

The moment of truth sets Cas's heart pounding as he turns to face the scale. A summer of pure laziness and gluttony must have taken its toll on his weight, just like it's taken its toll on his ability to go up stairs without getting winded, but he's still not sure if he's crossed the line into technical obesity just yet. And if he hasn't reached the two-sixteen marker yet, Cas isn't sure what he'll do—he's not sure what he _can_ do, when he's already eating to his limits every single day. But he sighs and steps up on the platform anyway, and keeps his eyes open as the red digital numbers climb and climb and finally stop on—

"Two-sixteen!" Cas can't help the sigh of relief that he lets slip out of his mouth. "Two-sixteen-and-a-half, even—Dean, we did it. We got me up to two-sixteen."

"No, Cas," Dean says, scratching at the back of his neck. "No, I mean. _You_ got you up to two-sixteen—all I really did was cook for you."

"You've done so much more than that, though." Huffing, Cas steps off the scale and crowds into Dean's personal space, standing between Dean's splayed legs, right where he was while Dean took his measurements. "You've been so encouraging, Dean. You've really gone above and beyond with that, you know. You give me belly rubs when I'm too full. You tell me how fat I'm getting. You've done so much for me, to help get me here. If I didn't know any better, I might even think…"

Unsure where to go—unsure of how to even say what's on his mind because it's so patently ridiculous—Cas trails off into another sigh. His heart thumps out a funeral dirge in his chest, then starts skipping around again as he realizes that Dean's hand is on his belly. Dean's fingers are brushing down his curve and sinking into his flesh. Cas blushes and heaves a deep breath—no more dawdling, he needs to ask.

"Dean, emotions and social cues are hardly my forte. But… tell me the truth: are you interested in me as anything other than a friend?"

It's Dean's turn to blush, now, and Cas recognizes the impulse that flares up as he sees Dean's skin go pink underneath of his freckles: he wants to kiss Dean Winchesters. Which only gets worse as Dean stumbles over half-baked syllables, trying to say something and only coming up with _uhm_ s and _er_ s, until he finally spits out, "What if I did, y'know? Would that be all right with you?"

There's not much distance left to close between them, but Cas still manages to get closer. He gets so close that Dean could easily nuzzle at his belly instead of touching it, and he cups Dean's jaw with one hand. "If you do feel that way for me," Cas says, "then I think you should know that I very much reciprocate."


End file.
